Review: The 2025 Tony Awards, a Predictably Happy Ending to an Extraordinary Season

As predicted by every member of TheaterMania’s editorial staff (and really anyone who has been paying attention this season), Maybe Happy Ending won the Tony Award for Best Musical, winning five additional trophies for scenic design, book, original score, direction, and leading performance by Darren Criss, a co-producer on the show who also co-hosted the first half of the ceremony with Renée Elise Goldsberry. It was a great night for him.

That first part, dubbed “Act One,” was, as always, a model of efficiency. Criss and Goldsberry doled out 12 competitive awards (including all the design awards) and four special awards in under 75 minutes. The winners got their say. No one was shuffled offstage.  And there were plenty of funny and touching moments.

Maybe Happy Ending co-writer Hue Park made a point of telling the entire audience that while Will Aronson may be his writing partner, he is very much single. Edwin Robinson, winner of this year’s Excellence in Theatre Education Award, gave a stirring speech (in a distinctly theatrical cadence) that reminded us all about the importance of a good teacher.

Not content to bask in the affirmation of her Isabelle Stevenson Award, Celia Keenan-Bolger used the small amount of time allotted to her acceptance speech to continue serving the theatrical community, promoting a new fellowship for cash-strapped young actors named after her friend and collaborator, the late Gavin Creel. And Harvey Fierstein dedicated his lifetime achievement award to the audience with a heartfelt speech that called out the small arts organizations, like Brooklyn’s Gallery Players, that put him on this path.

It was everything you could want from an awards ceremony, and it wrapped up early, giving the home audience five extra minutes to switch over from Pluto TV to CBS.

The main event opened with host Cynthia Erivo doing a backstage walkaround à la Sunset Blvd., transitioning into “Sometimes All You Need Is a Song,” a new gospel number by Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul. Despite backing vocals by Broadway Inspirational Voices and several members of the audience, it was a sedate affair with little build to quicken the pulse. In many ways, it was a harbinger of the show to come and its ultra-chill host.

Erivo felt like a gear shift after three years of Ariana DeBose as host. She has none of the Oscar winner’s boundless energy, nor the effortless charm of popular past hosts like Hugh Jackman or Neil Patrick Harris. Instead, Erivo approached the job with a coolness verging on frigid, creating the perfect climate for jokes like the one she delivered from a balcony high above the stage at Radio City Music Hall: “The balcony is the best and safest place to see Jonathan Groff sing,” she remarked just before his performance from the Bobby Darin musical Just in Time, calling the famously spitty actor, “a man who makes everyone wet.” The jokes were sparser this year than at previous Tony Awards, but when they arrived, they landed thanks to Erivo’s cold-as-ice delivery.

The ceremony was also short on surprises: As predicted, Cole Escola won the Leading Actor in a Play Tony for their performance in Oh, Mary!, as did that play’s director Sam Pinkleton. It was a nice recognition of a play that did so much to energize the season early on, a show that was ultimately doomed to lose the Best Play Tony to Purpose. This is Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’s second year in a row as a Tony winner, and I am certain the prolific playwright, arguably the very best of his generation, has many more on the way.

The fact that so many of these wins felt preordained made the few surprises genuinely delightful: Francis Jue triumphed in the Featured Actor in a Play category, even though Yellow Face has been closed for months. “Twenty years ago Alvin Ing gave me this tux,” he recalled of his Pacific Overtures castmate, “He wanted me to wear it when I accepted my Tony Award.” It was a lovely tribute from a veteran stage performer to his forebears.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening came in the much-remarked-upon Leading Actress in a Musical category, which many observers (including TheaterMania’s editorial staff) had decided was a contest between six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald and Broadway debutante Jasmine Amy Rogers. But in the end, they both lost to former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger and her gorgeous vocal interpretation of Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd.

This is despite an attempt to cancel her over her social media activities last November (she liked an Instagram photo of Russell Brand holding a red hat that read “Make Jesus First Again”). Frankly, denying Scherzinger a Tony always struck me as the lamest consolation prize for Donald Trump winning the election, and her detractors weren’t even able to accomplish that. It’s a sign that internet mobs don’t matter anymore and Broadway really does have room for everybody—even Christians.

Before her win was announced, Scherzinger gave a powerful performance of “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” introduced by the actor who previously portrayed Norma Desmond on Broadway, Glenn Close. It was one of several excellent performances last night, with the casts of Dead Outlaw, Pirates! The Penzance Musical, and Buena Vista Social Club working extra hard to sell their shows to the television audience.

McDonald also worked up a sweat with a snarling, screeching performance of “Rose’s Turn,” from Gypsy, that surely left the home audience confident that the voters made the correct decision, even if she managed to get everyone on their feet at Radio City Music Hall. But that’s the magic of live theater: Peer pressure often makes one abandon one’s sense of taste.

The low point came from a show that doesn’t need to do much to sell tickets anymore. Clad in black suits suggestive of the Broadway costumes (but more suggestive of a funeral), the original cast of Hamilton reunited in honor of the show’s 10^th anniversary, performing a medley of songs we’ve all heard a million times. While the actors, most of whom have gone on to storied careers, have still got it, I personally would have preferred that time go to the second act opener of Boop!, which really is one of the most impressive production numbers on Broadway this season.

But it would be impossible to squeeze everything that made this season so excellent into four-and-a-half hours. Those of us lucky enough to regularly attend Broadway might have felt every minute of what was a competently produced but dully predictable awards show. But for everyone else watching at home, it was an all-too-brief window into the wondrous things artists are creating on our greatest stages. Let’s hope they can top it next year—perhaps with a few more surprises.